Vergil in Averno

could just then say no more than some, the woman who had looked at him reminded him of a very curious story being told about Simon Magus and the woman whom he called (was said to call) Helen of Tyre. . or of Troy. Third and last of the considerations was that there had been that something in this one’s look at him, before she turned and went inside, which had more in it than the mere automatic look at any man as any man has had more than once from any such a woman, half a strolling player and half a whore. Or did he flatter himself? Did he or did he not, in he went, the price was indeed very modest and he paid for three seats in order that he might be free of perhaps unwanted, say unpleasant, company in the seats to right or left.

The play itself was nothing. Mingled with lines from Homer such as not alone every schoolboy knew but many who had never been inside a schoolroom, and lines introduced now and then rather less because the play required them as to allow those who knew them to show they knew by reciting them half-aloud along with the actors; mingled with those were abridgments of entire scenes compressed into a paragraph; now and then touches for the popular taste, if “taste” was quite the word, such as an obsequious actor, if actor was quite the word, declaiming, “O Hail Great King Priam! Great and glorious art thou, O King! I tell that thou art indeed a god!” At which time see “King Priam” make his eyes grow large, rise from his throne, extract from beneath it a vessel of an obvious utility, scan it closely, and respond, “That’s not what me night-pot tells me!”

Raucous laughter from the cheapest seats, chuckles from the others, though ancient (and, indeed, rather honorable) the jest. . jest now repeated with appreciation. . many people could not at all appreciate a jest in silence (most, Vergil recalled, with an inner sigh, could not even read in silence; his own, to some, arcane, ability to do so had more than once been remarked upon).

However. Nothing new. Half, Vergil was minded to leave and get on with things, half he waited in hopes he would by and by hear from the musicians a song, either old or new…. Vergil dearly loved a good song, or any good music e’en sans singing…. Quickly the action shifted, Priam lumbered offstage; enter his son Prince Paris, and with the Prince the Lady Helen of Troy; she was the woman who had so lightly, briefly, looked at him outside. A fine, full figure of a woman.

Paris: Come now, my Lady Helen! Why are you so bored? I know! It must have been the damned dull life you led, wedded to that oaf Menelaus! But come with me, and I shall show you that despite the fatigues of battle I am a better man than he — et cetera, et cetera, several bawdy declarations introduced as evidence to back his claim; chuckles from almost all the seats.

Helen: (Faces audience as she is tugged along, bedchamberward, by Paris, who, presumably deafened by passion, of course hears not one syllable) Helen: O Gods! These Trojan trolls! At least when as a chastely wedded, bedded wife I was from time to time assuaged and solaced of my boredom now and then by some good man. . not always Menelaus, to be sure…. She rolls her eyes, laughter from below; Paris, to emphasize the efforts he is making to drag her offstage, lifts his knees high and plants his feet down exactly where they were before; more laughter; cries of “Get a move on, Prince!” and “Want some help up there?”. . but at least there, across the wine-dark, the dolphin-torn, the gong-tormented sea. . a full half of the audience, catching on quickly to its cue, echoes: “… dolphin-torn …” And so on with the rest of it “… one heard at least, however cloaked in darkness, now and then some words in decent Greek!” Many laughters, doubtless for many different reasons. And Paris triumphed at last, off the two went, leering and winking, and then the music began to play an epithalamion, and not at all a bad one, with muffled amorous noises and now and then a small shriek from offstage-right.

She who played Helen, was it her full form that affected Vergil? — for affected he was — her face, fair enough? Or merely some deep and primal response to the little-or-no-nonsense, despite the nonsense, sexuality of the stage business? When had he last been in a woman’s arms? Since how long? Too long. Too long. In whose arms, in which woman’s arms would he now wish to be? Poppaea’s, came the true reply. Of beauty as determined by fashion and as delineated by the sculptor’s wedge or painter’s brush, of such Poppaea had near none. Her skin was unblemished and her large gray eyes were fine: what more? Her face was nothing memorable, not even could he entirely have said as he had heard one veteran legionary say of an eastern queen, “She was so uncommon ugly it fair hurt your teeth at first to look upon her, but my Here, boy! after one week of but standing a-guard inside her door, I’d have sold meself to sit by her feet.” Ugly, Rano’s wife was not, for all that she had a figure like an undernourished boy’s; would Vergil have sold himself to sit by her feet? One Vergil, a Citizen of Rome, no more: yes. But as P. Vergilius Marius, Master in Philosophy, and all the rest of it, who had made long journeys and endured hard studies in order to attain mastery over many things, the first of which class of things had been his own self and soul and pride and patience and over them, well … no. Much would he give, but he would not give himself to be in further thrall.

Besides (one voice said within him now, calm as a sage in the stoa), you have your duties to those who have engaged them. Besides (one voice said, cold, and with a touch of contemptuous surprise), it would be madness even to think of an intrigue with the wife of a magnate of Averno.

Would it?

— what voice was that? And yet another voice said but one word. And said it often.

Poppaea. Poppaea. Poppaea …

And there was, at last as at first, another voice yet, which had a more simple and a more accessible message, and in the end it was to this one that he hearkened.

The play concluded to Helen’s ringing screams as she watched, Homeric canonical text or no Homeric canonical text, Paris being slain in combat beside the reedy river of the Trojan shore — located, conveniently, offstage-right — curtain. A moment for the audience to taste the aftertaste. And then followed what critics were fond of calling, it being after all an easy call and one that required little resort to Aristotle or others, “a knockabout farce”; this subsided into a song and dance and a collection taken up in hopes that at least a few patrons would have forgotten having paid on their way in.

By then Vergil was backstage, “backstage” having the geographical reality of the Plain of Troy. A man, perhaps the manager, who had been leaning against the wall, whence he could see the “stage,” turned his head and looked at Vergil with the same look of contained sardonic amusement with which he had been watching the scene; merely raised his eyebrows in inquiry. “I thought,” said Vergil, “that I might be allowed to have a few words in private with the Lady Helen. . and I should try to put them all in decent Greek.”

The man said, briefly, “Haw!” managing to get into the one syllable all the emotions of his look; then, “I am sure she would be very pleased.” The tone was civil, even sincere; some slight glance he let show which indicated that he himself would, would some slight circumstance be different, be pleased to have a visit in private with the visitor, be this with what tongue might be; but this was as brief as the single syllable. A coin changed hands, discreetly, politely, with no change of expression on either face. Vergil found himself in a curtained cubicle. He had been in such before. Presently, in came the actress, gave him a pleasant-enough look, if a slightly appraising one.

“You seem decent,” she said, “but you are not Greek.”

“Neither, I trust, am I a Trojan troll.”

The woman chuckled. Clapped her hands. In came an older one with a basin of hot water, sponge, soft and scented soap, and a few cloth-pieces worn and washed till they were soft enough to serve as towels. “Let me get this muck off,” and, proceeding to remove her stage-paint, asked, “Well, what did you think of the play?”

Barely he hesitated. “Evocative,” he said.

This time she laughed outright. Then she murmured to the other woman, who put upon a tray most of the items which she had brought in, and went out. The woman “Helen” placed both hands upon his shoulders. “Are you going to give me a nice present?” she asked.

“More than one, I hope.”

She did not laugh now. “I believe you. I trust you. We won’t haggle. We will …” A moment she paused. “We will play our own play. This time I shall really be Helen. You will really be Paris. And now we are really together.” And added, “And alone.” It had grown dark. He did not ask nor linger thinking why, but moved closer to her. And what happened next between them was nothing, really, like anything that had ever happened between him and any courtesan or trull before. What he felt was no mere assuagement of need or indigency in satisfying a simple,